Zend\Permissions\Acl

The Zend\Permissions\Acl component provides a lightweight and flexible access control list (ACL) implementation for
privileges management. In general, an application may utilize such ACL‘s to control access to certain protected
objects by other requesting objects.

For the purposes of this documentation:

a resource is an object to which access is controlled.

a role is an object that may request access to a Resource.

Put simply, roles request access to resources. For example, if a parking attendant requests access to a car,
then the parking attendant is the requesting role, and the car is the resource, since access to the car may not be
granted to everyone.

Through the specification and use of an ACL, an application may control how roles are granted access to
resources.

Creating a resource using Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl is very simple. A resource interface
Zend\Permissions\Acl\Resource\ResourceInterface is provided to facilitate creating resources in an application. A class
need only implement this interface, which consists of a single method, getResourceId(), for Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl to
recognize the object as a resource. Additionally, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Resource\GenericResource is provided as a basic
resource implementation for developers to extend as needed.

Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl provides a tree structure to which multiple resources can be added. Since resources are stored in
such a tree structure, they can be organized from the general (toward the tree root) to the specific (toward the
tree leaves). Queries on a specific resource will automatically search the resource’s hierarchy for rules assigned
to ancestor resources, allowing for simple inheritance of rules. For example, if a default rule is to be applied to
each building in a city, one would simply assign the rule to the city, instead of assigning the same rule to each
building. Some buildings may require exceptions to such a rule, however, and this can be achieved in
Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl by assigning such exception rules to each building that requires such an exception. A resource may
inherit from only one parent resource, though this parent resource can have its own parent resource, etc.

Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl also supports privileges on resources (e.g., “create”, “read”, “update”, “delete”), so the
developer can assign rules that affect all privileges or specific privileges on one or more resources.

As with resources, creating a role is also very simple. All roles must implement Zend\Permissions\Acl\Role\RoleInterface.
This interface consists of a single method, getRoleId(), Additionally, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Role\GenericRole is
provided by the Zend\Permissions\Acl component as a basic role implementation for developers to extend as needed.

In Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl, a role may inherit from one or more roles. This is to support inheritance of rules among
roles. For example, a user role, such as “sally”, may belong to one or more parent roles, such as “editor” and
“administrator”. The developer can assign rules to “editor” and “administrator” separately, and “sally” would
inherit such rules from both, without having to assign rules directly to “sally”.

Though the ability to inherit from multiple roles is very useful, multiple inheritance also introduces some degree
of complexity. The following example illustrates the ambiguity condition and how Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl solves it.

Multiple Inheritance among Roles

The following code defines three base roles - “guest”, “member”, and “admin” - from which other roles may inherit.
Then, a role identified by “someUser” is established and inherits from the three other roles. The order in which
these roles appear in the $parents array is important. When necessary, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl searches for access
rules defined not only for the queried role (herein, “someUser”), but also upon the roles from which the queried
role inherits (herein, “guest”, “member”, and “admin”):

Since there is no rule specifically defined for the “someUser” role and “someResource”, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl must
search for rules that may be defined for roles that “someUser” inherits. First, the “admin” role is visited, and
there is no access rule defined for it. Next, the “member” role is visited, and Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl finds that there
is a rule specifying that “member” is allowed access to “someResource”.

If Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl were to continue examining the rules defined for other parent roles, however, it would find
that “guest” is denied access to “someResource”. This fact introduces an ambiguity because now “someUser” is both
denied and allowed access to “someResource”, by reason of having inherited conflicting rules from different parent
roles.

Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl resolves this ambiguity by completing a query when it finds the first rule that is directly
applicable to the query. In this case, since the “member” role is examined before the “guest” role, the example
code would print “allowed”.

Note

When specifying multiple parents for a role, keep in mind that the last parent listed is the first one searched
for rules applicable to an authorization query.

An Access Control List (ACL) can represent any set of physical or virtual objects that you wish. For the purposes
of demonstration, however, we will create a basic Content Management System (CMS) ACL that maintains several
tiers of groups over a wide variety of areas. To create a new ACL object, we instantiate the ACL with no
parameters:

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useZend\Permissions\Acl\Acl;$acl=newAcl();

Note

Until a developer specifies an “allow” rule, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl denies access to every privilege upon every
resource by every role.

CMS‘s will nearly always require a hierarchy of permissions to determine the authoring capabilities of its users.
There may be a ‘Guest’ group to allow limited access for demonstrations, a ‘Staff’ group for the majority of CMS
users who perform most of the day-to-day operations, an ‘Editor’ group for those responsible for publishing,
reviewing, archiving and deleting content, and finally an ‘Administrator’ group whose tasks may include all of
those of the other groups as well as maintenance of sensitive information, user management, back-end configuration
data, backup and export. This set of permissions can be represented in a role registry, allowing each group to
inherit privileges from ‘parent’ groups, as well as providing distinct privileges for their unique group only. The
permissions may be expressed as follows:

Access Controls for an Example CMS

Name

Unique Permissions

Inherit Permissions From

Guest

View

N/A

Staff

Edit, Submit, Revise

Guest

Editor

Publish, Archive, Delete

Staff

Administrator

(Granted all access)

N/A

For this example, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Role\GenericRole is used, but any object that implements
Zend\Permissions\Acl\Role\RoleInterface is acceptable. These groups can be added to the role registry as follows:

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useZend\Permissions\Acl\Acl;useZend\Permissions\Acl\Role\GenericRoleasRole;$acl=newAcl();// Add groups to the Role registry using Zend\Permissions\Acl\Role\GenericRole// Guest does not inherit access controls$roleGuest=newRole('guest');$acl->addRole($roleGuest);// Staff inherits from guest$acl->addRole(newRole('staff'),$roleGuest);/*Alternatively, the above could be written:$acl->addRole(new Role('staff'), 'guest');*/// Editor inherits from staff$acl->addRole(newRole('editor'),'staff');// Administrator does not inherit access controls$acl->addRole(newRole('administrator'));

Now that the ACL contains the relevant roles, rules can be established that define how resources may be accessed
by roles. You may have noticed that we have not defined any particular resources for this example, which is
simplified to illustrate that the rules apply to all resources. Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl provides an implementation whereby
rules need only be assigned from general to specific, minimizing the number of rules needed, because resources and
roles inherit rules that are defined upon their ancestors.

Note

In general, Zend\Permissions\Acl\Acl obeys a given rule if and only if a more specific rule does not apply.

Consequently, we can define a reasonably complex set of rules with a minimum amount of code. To apply the base
permissions as defined above:

We now have a flexible ACL that can be used to determine whether requesters have permission to perform functions
throughout the web application. Performing queries is quite simple using the isAllowed() method:

echo$acl->isAllowed('guest',null,'view')?"allowed":"denied";// allowedecho$acl->isAllowed('staff',null,'publish')?"allowed":"denied";// deniedecho$acl->isAllowed('staff',null,'revise')?"allowed":"denied";// allowedecho$acl->isAllowed('editor',null,'view')?"allowed":"denied";// allowed because of inheritance from guestecho$acl->isAllowed('editor',null,'update')?"allowed":"denied";// denied because no allow rule for 'update'echo$acl->isAllowed('administrator',null,'view')?"allowed":"denied";// allowed because administrator is allowed all privilegesecho$acl->isAllowed('administrator')?"allowed":"denied";// allowed because administrator is allowed all privilegesecho$acl->isAllowed('administrator',null,'update')?"allowed":"denied";// allowed because administrator is allowed all privileges